Another DK list for 5.2 (mostly for unholy)

Yes... another wish list (i know there are other wish lists out there).

I simply want to provide my ideas and suggestions in patch notes form and express that dks need some more love.

FYI, this post is mainly for unholys because they were supposed to get the "love" that they were supposed to get and i do worship and live unholy ever since WOTLK release:

Spell changes

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Death Knight
- Bone shield baseline (4 charges down from 6 for unholy/frost)
- Blood boil base damage reduced greatly, hits very hard at low levels, makes strikes very worthless
- Strangulate cd reduced to 1 min, no rune cost and no GCD
- Army of the Dead cd reduced to 5 min (usable in arenas/rbgs) still needs to be channeled, however you cannot be interrupted
Blood
- Now has blood tap
Frost
- Now has runic empowerment
Unholy
- Now has runic corruption
- Death coil damage increased by 10%
- Dreadblade mastery reduced to 16% down from 20%
- New passive has been added, Shadow blight, when your death coil hits your target, 10% of its total dmg is done as a disease over 10 seconds (counts as a disease, thus making SS stronger)
- Festering strike damage increased by 20%
- Unholy might increases strength by 20%
- Master of ghouls now reduces raise dead cd by 1min, also causes the ghoul to inherit 45% of the master's strength and stamina
- Dark transformation charges have been reduced from 5 to 3 (less ramp up time), each charge increases damage by 15%, final effect is 80% damage (instead of 100%)
- Causing the Dark transformation effect no longer requires a rune and triggers no GCD
- Desecration has been brought back, now triggers from scourge strike or defiling strike only, also increases damage by 5% if you stand in the desecration, it also has 5 sec cooldown (reduction of spamming) also has a sick graphic effect with the grasping hands reaching out of the desecration
- Unholy frenzy also increases you and your pet's damage dealt by 10% in addition to its current effects (make it feel like a 3 min cooldown)
- New passive has been added, "Dark Necrosis", your auto attacks now deal additional 10% damage as shadow
- Wandering plague has been brought back, when your diseases damage an enemy, there is a chance equal to your critical strike chance that they will cause 50% additional damage to all enemies within 8 yards. Ignores any target under the effect of a spell that is cancelled by taking damage

Lichborne- unchanged
Anti-magic zone- Now reduces magic damage by 40%, no longer has a limit, still lasts for 10 seconds
Purgatory- duration extended to 6 seconds, during this effect healing done to you is increased by 50%

Blood- Impaling strike (heart strike) now deals 125% weapon damage plus 765 on the primary target and to 5 additional nearby enemies, additional enemies are struck 125% of the damage done to the main target, damage is increased by 15% per disease. In addition targets are slowed by 50%.

Frost- Gloomy strike (frost strike) now deals 125% weapon damage as shadow frost damage, every time you Gloomy strike you gain frosty pillars buff stacking 5 times, once reaching 5 stacks you unleash a path of spiky frost 30 yards in front of you causing enemies in the way to be knocked away from the path 5 yards dealing 23460 frost damage (this effect has a 1 min cooldown).

Runic mind- Your mind is empowered with runes, your maximum runic power is increased by 50 and runic power regen is increased by 10%
Blood caked blade- Your auto attacks have a 25% to cause a blood-caked strike which hits for 100% weapon damage plus 15% for each of your diseases on your target (7% for unholy),

Gift of the Lich king- Your attacks infuse death into your target. When you deal damage to your target you have a chance of exploding fear into your target causing your target and 4 nearby enemies to run away in terror for 8 seconds (this effect has a 1 minute cooldown)

The above followed are my best ideas for a more balanced game (pve and pvp wise), i expect at least one of what i just posted to be implemented anytime soon or probably never.
Please post your opinions on what you think.

And again.. i believe nothing that i just typed up will make it to the game or anything good and such.
EDITED: Updated 1/3

Guna try to provide some thoughts on everything here (will skip things I'm indifferent about as there is so much)

-Baseline
No real need for Bone Shield to go baseline, it's changes in Mists were needed and great but I don't see why a 2% dmg increase would help, as we don't need 2 survivability CD's for base dmg along with AMS, other classes would rage.
Blood boil shouldn't matter that it hits hard at low levels, it is balanced for max. That is what's needed.
Raise dead would then just have to be nerfed, 1 min CD and ghoul lasts 1 min means 100% uptime so it would be nerfed. There can be no benefit here
Strangulate changes would be lovely
Army got a buff in Mists, it does pretty nice dmg now, nerfing it just so it can be used in arena/rbgs just means it gets nerfed again in dmg to compensate it's cd reduction, and I like how it works now as it does pretty nice dmg and feels like you are actually raising an army of the dead.
-Blood/Frost/Unholy
No baseline of the rune regen sources. Giving us the option to choose was a great thing imo, I personally love blood with runic corruption. They fill the talent tree as fodder pretty much but I would rather have the choice compared to it going to as it was before.
Unholy is already getting a buff in the PTR as is, how it will pan out we will see soon since the PTR only just came up, but this would be a lot of changes to the spec. The Timmy charge reduction would be nice but overall what would be best is if he auto-transformed at 5, less micro-management (although there are downsides to this as well).
Overall I actually think most of those changes to Unholy would be cool, but it's adding in far far too much damage.

-Glyphs
Death and decay is nice, specially with adds in raids.

-Talents

-Tier 1
Unholy blight shouldn't need to feel like a dps increase, it's a way to apply our dots not to do direct dmg. Quick Decay would be nice if Unholy could still easily maintain them via FS, would then make Frost feel left out as that would just kick em in the teeth to do more PS though.

-Tier 2
That would actually nerf AMZ so hard, right now it works well as if the breaking point is hit rapidly then it's just a flat 75% reduction (think Ultraxion) so losing 35% would be lame. Purgatory should give you a healing buff if you get it, Cauterize doesn't, technically we should NEVER have Purgatory proc.

-Tier 4
The tier is fine as is, DS is even getting a buff in 5.2.

-Tier 5
Should stay the same to go with rune regen comment above, but will comment on what was put.
Impaling Strike would be massivly strong unless dmg decreased per target hit.
Gloomy sounds cool, the knockback pointless though. We are a melee toon, so except the very few times where we would want to run rather then be hitting the target the knockback just moves the target away from us. The damage component would be a nice added dps rotation point for frost though (even if it's passive).
Defiling Strike would be a near overall, crit strike leaves too much RNG to ring it down from a 130% strike to 75%. I wouldn't mind it if left at 175% though, I do like me the crits !
Runic Mind.... "does math for how many DC's can be used in that" if Timmy's charges were reduced yay, if not, nay.
Full support on Blood Caked Blade!

-Tier 6
Would be cool to have a fear rather then DG, sounds very death knight...ey too.

Some things I would add:
Another sorta summon for Unholy, a shorter little CD say 1.5 mins. Maybe raise a necromancer to shoot shadow bolts at the target for x dmg and x amount of time.
Another move in frost's rotation, sitting on KM procs and spamming HB no matter which way you go the spec imo feels very stagnent compared to Unholy.
Blood is decent enough as is for the moment, we got some pvp nerfs but overall meh.
Desecration could be brought back in the form of a CC, could root or snare the target for 1 min breakable with dmg cast time low ect ect. The usual CC stuff.

Hey, thx for the feedback appreciate it, ill prob take the advice on some, but i got to argue about the raise dead thing, the fact that our pet dies way too fast and its kinda frustrating to watch my pet's hp, and the 2% on bone shield.... just kinda going with the wotlk idea, no biggie. I did also down the charges for the dps specs so it would probably be faster to break.

The thing i care mostly about is desecration, i loved the proc and how it worked.... i want it back QQ.

And the reason defiling strike was 75% wep dmg is because its PURE shadow dmg and the fact that it crits more often and scales off of mastery.

it's clear you like unholy... so do I (it's my main spec) but seriously, you mentioned you want to make this a balanced game and yet you completely imbalanced everything with these changes. Lets start by actually acknowledging that a.) simcraft doesn't correctly apply diseases as unholy so the "5% or so" that unholy is behind frost only becomes 2%ish when taking snapshotted diseases into account (on a single-target fight). Your changes would basically buff unholy beyond belief, making it the go-to spec.

bone shield: DPS specs don't need it - we have enough DPS boosts as it is through cooldowns and trinkets.blood boil: Agreed it could scale better from low-high levels but it still hits like a truck at 90 in AOE situations.raise dead cd reduction: TBH unholy should get a reduction, 1min on all specs would mean its uptime was too highStrangulate: I agree with the suggestionChanges to BT/RE/RC being baseline for Blood/Frost/Unholy... don't agree with that, the freedom to choose your rune regen talent makes for a more varied playstyle and I love Blood Tap.Third Disease for scourge strike damage: Scourge strike could use a small boost but disease idea would make our damage output OPFestering strike damage increased by 20%: why? It's there to keep diseases rolling and provide death runes.Unholy might increases strength by 20%: doesn't need that - Unholy has more str than frost and it scales better, this would be OPMaster of ghouls now reduces raise dead cd by 30 sec, also causes the ghoul to inherit 45% of the master's strength and stamina: Stamina change I can get behind... but the other changes would mean your pet was likely doing 70k dps on it's own once it was transformed, just no.Dark transformation charges have been reduced from 5 to 3 (less ramp up time): Yes, unholy needs but none of the other DT changes :-PDesecration has been brought back, now triggers from scourge strike or defiling strike only, also increases damage by 5%: Really, another damage increase - that's about 100% extra damage for unholy so far -.-Plague strike has been renamed to diseased strike, now applies frost fever, blood plague, and defiling plague: Forget defiling plague... but this change is occuring in 5.2 anywayUnholy frenzy also increases you and your pet's damage dealt by 10% in addition to its current effects: That's more damage for unholy then, christNew passive has been added, "Dark Necrosis", your auto attacks and strikes now deal additional 10% damage as shadow: more damage!Wandering plague has been brought back: I could stop here really, couldn't I.

GLYPHS

Chains of ice, now causes frost damage similar to icy touch: Why? It's a root, not a DPS ability.Death and decay glyph removed: any reason?Death coil's bubble effect now stacks: Could get behind this one, would be nice if you could target yourself.Enduring infection now reduces disease damage dealt by 15% down from 30%: Not needed, it's the payoff for undispellable diseases.

TALENTS

Plague leech- removed: Really? you removed the only talent which technically gives a slight dps increase for unholy on a single target fight? If you wanted to change it why not just do something like "plague leech: draws forth the infection from the enemy to hit for 60% of the remaining diseases damage on a target"Unholy blight- cooldown is now 1 min, in addition diseases applied by unholy bight deal 10% damage: More damage! No, UB is already a viable talent (even more for frost) as it's a free AOE outbreak.New talent (replaces plague leech) - Quick decay, your diseases scale 20% of your haste, however, they last less longer: Don't understand, you want longer diseases? They easilly last over a minute with unholy.Anti-magic zone- Now reduces magic damage by 40%, no longer has a limit, still lasts for 10 seconds: *shrug* AMZ is situationally good as it is, the tooltip doesn't really explain how it works but it can stop a massive amount of incoming damage if used at the correct time.Purgatory- duration extended to 6 seconds, during this effect healing done to you is increased by 50%: OHAI, I'm immortal for 6 seconds while I take you down... not going to happen. Purgatory is great already for those bursty times where your healers just can't keep up, it shouldn't be an "I'm going to die but I'm taking you with me" talent.Death's Advance- Passive 10% movement speed has been removed, you may not be slowed below 100% normal movement speed: Yeah that's not op at all.Asphyxiate- Doesn't replace strangulate: AgreedDeath Siphon - Rune cost depends on specialization (like soul reaper): Why?Conversion- Now allows all runic power generation instead of base regeneration: You could keep it up permanently... just no

Not going to go on... I understand you want changes to DKs but flat-out buffs to damage is just not the way to go. I do agree with a couple of your suggestions though

---------- Post added 2013-01-03 at 08:38 AM ----------

These were a few "dream" changes I posted on the official forum a month or so back... might aswell use your post to put them here (and yes I realise the conversion/ghoul changes have been announced anyway!)

UNHOLY PRESENCE
You are infused with unholy fury, increasing attack speed and rune regeneration by 10%, and movement speed by 15%. While in unholy presence your Death Coil ability costs 10 less runic power.

STRANGULATE
Shadowy tendrils constrict an enemy's throat, silencing them for 5 sec. Non-player victim spellcasting is also interrupted for 3 sec. Ability now has no resource cost. This ability is not replaced by Asphyxiate.

ASPHYXIATE
Lifts an enemy target off the ground and crushes their throat with dark energy, stunning them for 5 sec. No longer functions as a silence. No longer replaces Strangulate, cooldown increased from 1min to 1.5min.

ICEBOUND FORTITUDE
The Death Knight freezes his blood to become immune to Stun effects and reduce all damage taken by 35% (up from 20%) for 8 sec (down from 12sec). Cooldown reduced from 3mins to 2mins. Ability no longer costs resources.

HOSTILE TAKEOVERNEW TALENT - Replaces Death's Advance as a level 58 talent. The Death Knight disarms his opponent for 5 seconds and reduces attack/casting speed of the opponent by 25% for 10seconds. Instant, 1 min cooldown.

DEATH'S ADVANCEDeath's Advance is now a baseline ability for Death Knights but no longer causes a passive movement speed increase. Movement-impairing effects may not reduce you below 75% of normal movement speed. (up from 70%) Upon activation the death knight breaks all movement impairing effects, may not be slowed below 100% movement speed and gains immunity to roots and snares for 6 seconds. 30 second cooldown.

CONVERSION
Continuously converts Runic Power to health, restoring 5% of maximum health every 1 sec. (up from 3%) Only base Runic Power generation from spending runes may occur while Conversion is active. This effect lasts until canceled, or Runic Power is exhausted.

HOWLING BLAST
The Primary Target damage of Howling Blast has been reduced by 10%.

The AOE portion of the Howling Blast ability has been reduced to 35% of the primary target's damage (down from 50%)

ICY TOUCH
The Icy Touch ability has now been buffed to do 15% more single target damage than Howling Blast.

GLYPH OF ICY TOUCH
Glyph of Icy Touch has been removed and replaced with a re-worked glyph of Chains of Ice.

GLYPH OF CHAINS OF ICE
Now causes 150damage to the target (modified by attack power) and has a 50% chance to dispell one helpful magic effect from the target.

SUMMON GARGOYLE
A Gargoyle flies into the area and bombards the target with Shadow (previously Nature) damage modified by the Death Knight's attack power and mastery. Persists for 30 sec. The Gargoyle will always attempt to stay within LOS of the target and fly to the Death Knight if he gets out of range. 30 yard range.

Replaces Master of Ghouls and Control Undead while in Unholy specialization. Dominates the target undead creature, forcing it to do your bidding. The Dominated undead minion is considered a permanent pet and will last until released. The Unholy Death Knight can keep a maximum of 3 different undead minions. Your raise dead ability now contains 3 slots where you can choose between your dominated undead. (2min cooldown)

Different types of Undead minions have different abilities, the 4 main types being:

Replaces Master of Ghouls and Control Undead while in Unholy specialization. Dominates the target undead creature, forcing it to do your bidding. The Dominated undead minion is considered a permanent pet and will last until released. The Unholy Death Knight can keep a maximum of 3 different undead minions. Your raise dead ability now contains 3 slots where you can choose between your dominated undead. (2min cooldown)

Different types of Undead minions have different abilities, the 4 main types being:

Death's Advance- Passive 10% movement speed has been removed, you may not be slowed below 100% normal movement speed

DEATH'S ADVANCE
Death's Advance is now a baseline ability for Death Knights but no longer causes a passive movement speed increase. Movement-impairing effects may not reduce you below 75% of normal movement speed. (up from 70%) Upon activation the death knight breaks all movement impairing effects, may not be slowed below 100% movement speed and gains immunity to roots and snares for 6 seconds. 30 second cooldown.

I have a real problem with that. In PvE, snares/roots aren't giving you any mobility, and the speed component of Death's Advance is the only way we can get faster to a boss. I seriously hope this never goes away ... if it even could add a little more speed than just 30% upon activation, I'd be happy.

Anti-magic zone- Now reduces magic damage by 40%, no longer has a limit, still lasts for 10 seconds: *shrug* AMZ is situationally good as it is, the tooltip doesn't really explain how it works but it can stop a massive amount of incoming damage if used at the correct time.

Way too situational. Not only does it have a very small range/radius, it's also very bad in 25-mans where the damage cap is reached by a single tick and you actually have to spec for it, giving up various interesting talents. The paladin cooldown has an enormous range, no damage cap and is baseline. Blood is already lacking in terms of raid utility, something should happen.

Last edited by Asheriah; 2013-01-03 at 10:13 AM.

We don't believe in your Horde or your Alliance. We only believe in undeath.

Way too situational. Not only does it have a very small range/radius, it's also very bad in 25-mans where the damage cap is reached by a single tick and you actually have to spec for it, giving up various interesting talents. The paladin cooldown has an enormous range, no damage cap and is baseline. Blood is already lacking in terms of raid utility, something should happen.

it is situational, and yes a change could be made to make it better on DOT abilities - but for large, high damage, instant abilities (not dots or small amounts of damage over a period of time) it reduces 75% of the damage before it even works out whether or not it has absorbed enough damage to break the AMZ... I quite like it :-P Agreed that Blood needs a better "raidwall" type ability.

Originally Posted by Asheriah

I have a real problem with that. In PvE, snares/roots aren't giving you any mobility, and the speed component of Death's Advance is the only way we can get faster to a boss. I seriously hope this never goes away ... if it even could add a little more speed than just 30% upon activation, I'd be happy.

Yeah there's 2 sides to the coin tbh, the change I suggested to DA took into account the rest of the changes I suggested, namely being able to take chilblains at the same time. The mobility comes from being able to slow your target and have a "hand of freedom" effectively. Along with the speed boost to boots OR using unholy presence + grip + gnaw if you're unholy + chains you should be able to stay close to your opponent for a lot of the time (even if it's not 100%)

Now then, I only pvp these days so I cannot comment on pve changes at all.

Blizzard is on the hunt for blanket silences. The reason ours is still in the game is most likely since it has a reasonable CD and a real cost, not some mana which is regged in 2 secs, but a rune which takes longer and can't be exchanged in infinity by more of the same resource.
Let's keep it that way. A well placed silence like ours will be in the game while short CD ones, like mage/lock ones seem to be hit hard.

I see 2 major flaws for UH in pvp now. Some kind of defensive CD and pet scaling/health.

We lack defence, we have shell which is good, a 20% reduction with stun immune (good vs mages/rogues, inadequate vs most other damage dealer we face) and blood presence which doesnt help all that much even though we use it when our CDs are out and we are being trained. A real defensive CD would be nice to have. And make it have a drawback so we can't pop it and continue to go nuts, make it useable only in blood presence and lose the effect if we switch out of it. There. A CD that makes us take less damage for some time but we lose our damage potential during it. Perfect when healers are CCd and what not.

Our pet is a joke. People target it and kill it in seconds. To heal it with DC is not enough, it needs to toughen up. Give it a fair bit of damage reduction, call it something like "Flayed skin - your pet takes 35% less damage from all sources".

bone shield: DPS specs don't need it - we have enough DPS boosts as it is through cooldowns and trinkets.

I put in the 2% dmg dealt for pretty much no reason (maybe 1% increase dps), but i reduce the charges on BS for unholy/frost to reduce too much tankage or survival.

raise dead cd reduction: TBH unholy should get a reduction, 1min on all specs would mean its uptime was too high

You got me there, probably was a bad idea to make reduction of cd baseline, but yes unholy needs a reduction of raise dead cd, could stick to 1 min cd.

Changes to BT/RE/RC being baseline for Blood/Frost/Unholy... don't agree with that, the freedom to choose your rune regen talent makes for a more varied playstyle and I love Blood Tap.

Sorry... but its not a creative tier, very unoriginal and come on... i like the empowered strikes abilities (i might tone them down), or we can just bring back the old blood tap.

Desecration has been brought back, now triggers from scourge strike or defiling strike only, also increases damage by 5%: Really, another damage increase - that's about 100% extra damage for unholy so far -.-

Again, its a rare puddle that has a 2 sec cd, doesn't proc AT ALL in pve (well on boss fights that is).

Unholy frenzy also increases you and your pet's damage dealt by 10% in addition to its current effects: That's more damage for unholy then, christ

Unholy needs to have a "bursty" feel to their rotation (i know unholy is necessary designed to burst) but come on i could trade unholy frenzy back for hysteria for the sake of it.

Master of ghouls now reduces raise dead cd by 30 sec, also causes the ghoul to inherit 45% of the master's strength and stamina: Stamina change I can get behind... but the other changes would mean your pet was likely doing 70k dps on it's own once it was transformed, just no.

I reduce the dmg % of DS to compensate, yes we definitely need the hp increase.

New passive has been added, "Dark Necrosis", your auto attacks and strikes now deal additional 10% damage as shadow: more damage!

Honestly, i miss WOTLK so im just throwing out ideas the were previously given to unholys, but i guess i could imagine it doing a lot of dmg.

Wandering plague has been brought back: I could stop here really, couldn't I.

Third Disease for scourge strike damage: Scourge strike could use a small boost but disease idea would make our damage output OP

Yeah... i can imagine our AOE exceeding the charts beyond imaginable and single target and SS does indeed need a boost, i got an idea..... ill change up the notes some more.

Festering strike damage increased by 20%: why? It's there to keep diseases rolling and provide death runes.
Unholy might increases strength by 20%: doesn't need that - Unholy has more str than frost and it scales better, this would be OP

Slight dps increase, nothing needed too much really.

New talent (replaces plague leech) - Quick decay, your diseases scale 20% of your haste, however, they last less longer: Don't understand, you want longer diseases? They easilly last over a minute with unholy.

Let me clarify, LESS LONGER meaning the diseases are gonna have a shorter duration depending on your haste (like runic corruption) and the diseases can tick faster.

Anti-magic zone- Now reduces magic damage by 40%, no longer has a limit, still lasts for 10 seconds: *shrug* AMZ is situationally good as it is, the tooltip doesn't really explain how it works but it can stop a massive amount of incoming damage if used at the correct time.

I think its a better design because i notice the second i put down AMZ it literately disappears, but with the new design it would actually sit on its ground for 10 sec, might be a nerf in pvp but its 2ndary ams.

Death's Advance- Passive 10% movement speed has been removed, you may not be slowed below 100% normal movement speed: Yeah that's not op at all.

You don't recall season 9 dks... do you? this might be a big downside to pve dks, but hey 100% movement speed at all times.

Anyhow, i like your ideas but for DA being baseline it should just stay unholy to make the spec feel "special" and if dominate undead is a talent... why does it benefit unholy only?

Again, in my current post this is a list of ideas, not a whole patch that i plan for blizzard to implement in the future.

don't get me wrong - I apologise if my post seemed like I was just crapping on your ideas... I just read it and saw damage boosts all over the shop and I don't personally think that's what unholy needs to make it a more popular spec atm.

Personally I would LOVE if they brought back wandering plague, blood caked blade, the unholy blight death coil DOT etc but that's just not realistic... I know you were just posting it as ideas but, IMO any ideas for class changes should look like they could actually happen... I like your ideas, I do, but I could just as easilly say "new ability - has chance on disease tick to summon an extra ghoul upto a maximum of 50 that last until server reset", it would be awesome but I just don't see it happening :-P

I miss the old blood tap but I love the new blood tap with unholy, I pretty much constantly have 4 death runes and a couple of unholy runes, it's amazing for soul reaper and not getting lumbered with frost runes for too long, I wouldn't want to go back to RC or RE now with an unholy spec

I agree unholy needs more of a burst element, I hope that will come in 5.2 with the new mastery-buffed gargoyle but I'm not holding out too much hope. In reality patchwerk fights just don't exist any more, most fights involve an element of movement or target switching where burst damage is king - to even things out I believe unholy should do slightly more single target damage than frost but the tradeoff is the ramp up time. TBH something like introducing blood caked blade again might even be viable as unholy scales terribly with weapon damage at the moment.

Dominate Undead was suggested to bring people back to unholy, I worded it incorrectly and should have said "NEW ABILITY" rather than "NEW TALENT"... it's the DK pet spec and just makes sense that unholy would be the one to benefit from it. Anyone who still wanted a hard hitting, bursty melee spec would stick with frost anyway. Not everyone likes managing pets.